Would be, well, idiocy, if this quote from Germany is anything to go on:
“This is a rare event,” said Alla Samkova, 68, a native Muscovite who has been living in Berlin for 45 years. “In the end it doesn’t matter what he says; it only matters that he’s here.”
That is all there is to Obama - the fact that he’s Obama.
November might well end up with all kinds of surprises.
4 comments July 25th, 2008 at 02:11am Mark Noonan
Wow. Now this is audacity of a dope.
Republicans are, smartly, seizing upon this report from Der Spiegel (which has become a must-read this week):
SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that Obama has cancelled a planned short visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The visits were planned for Friday. “Barack Obama will not be coming to us,” a spokesperson for the US military hospital in Landstuhl announced. “I don’t know why.” Shortly before the same spokeswoman had announced a planned visit by Obama.
The optics here are not good: Obama has time to get in a workout and give a speech to a crowd mostly comprised of Europeans, but can’t be bothered to visit American troops wounded in action recovering at a military hospital.
Obviously, Obama found it more worth his while to rally for Europeans to get that media coverage of him being a rockstar in Europe than it was for him to meet with members of the military whom he wants to be the commander-in-chief of.
UPDATE: It’s worth noting that the Obama campaign’s excuse for dissing our troops doesnt’ hold water
“The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign,” explains spokesman Robert Gibbs.
This is a sticky wicket for Obama.
On the one hand, he’s been criticized for the (laughable) contention that the trip is not related to the campaign. To clearly delineate those elements of the tour that are related to his role as a senator and those that are undeniably political would seem to be a way to respond to that critique and seperate church from state. Moreover, he’s being doubly safe by avoiding the perception of campaigning in a military hospital and using wounded troops as props.
But then how many politicians include official stops in the course of a trip otherwise related to a campaign (think POTUS or a member of Congress doing fundraising and public business on the same day). Further, Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on this, the campaign-funded, part of his trek. If that was deemed ok, than are we to assume that each of his get-togethers with European leaders is political in nature?
Assuming their rationale was on the level and not just cover to give the candidate a breather, the easier move may have been to still visit Rammstein and Landstuhl but keep the press behind.
Of course, if Obama cared to visit the troops, he’d have made the effort to see them… even without the media.
26 comments July 24th, 2008 at 10:50pm Matt Margolis
In Germany today, Barack Hussein Obama had this to say about his “actions” regarding Iran. As Powerline notes,
Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.But Obama is not a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Obama just made that up so he could count the committee’s action as one of “my deeds.”
How is it that a U.S. Senator, one who is supposedly made of the “right stuff” to lead this nation on a glorious path toward…uhh.. change, doesn’t even know on which committee he serves? Is he that dense? Or is it that Obama is just that brazen a liar, in the knowledge that his fawning, sycophantic media posse will provide the needed cover?
In either case, it may behoove you Obamatons to really think, and think hard, before pulling that lever in November.
CORRECTION: I mistakenly stated that Obama made the quoted speech in Germany; in actuality, Obama made the speech yesterday at Sderot, Israel. Thanks, Casper.
21 comments July 24th, 2008 at 08:33pm Leo Pusateri
Nothing like getting “backs agains the wall” to shake a person up and make them realise that they’re in the fight:
Two influential American Evangelical leaders have taken a new interest in the 2008 presidential race, with one saying that he leans toward the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, while another plans to host the first head-to-head meeting of the two leading contenders for the White House.
Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, told a radio audience: “While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might.” Dr. Dobson, who commands a wide following among conservative Evangelicals, had previously said that he could not support McCain because of the senator’s support for embryo research and his failure to back a constitutional amendment protecting marriage.
However, Dr. Dobson said that the “radical positions on life, marriage, and national security” taken by Senator Barack Obama were pushing him toward McCain.
Meanwhile Rick Warren, the leader of one of America’s largest “mega-church” congregations, the Saddleback Church in California, has announced plans to hold a forum that would hear both Obama and McCain. Warren, the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, will bring the Democratic and Republican candidates together for an August 16 event that, he says, will be “an unprecedented opportunity for America to hear both men back-to-back on the same platform.” Warren, who has not previously taken an active role in partisan politics, will be the only person questioning the candidates at the August 16 event.
There was much talk as McCain emerged the clear front runner for the GOP nomination about sitting this one out - Evangelicals because McCain wasn’t 100% (in their view ) and movement conservatives because, once again, McCain wasn’t 100% (in their view). My grandfather had a saying that I’ve laid to heart - better to have 10% of something than 100% of nothing. Whatever McCain may or may not do in the White House, we can rest assured that Obama will be worse for Christian conservatives and movement conservatives….there is, actually, not one position Obama has staked out which can be called by conservatives and conservative Christians better than the McCain position.
As for me, I’ve grown “re-comfortable” with McCain - he was, after all, my main serious choice for 2000 (Bush came in after him, one other person came in front of McCain, but mostly for fun on my part). McCain did much to annoy me since 2001 - most notably on refusing to back the tax cuts and the “gang of 14″ nonsense in the Senate (immigraiton reform? Sorry, but I backed the McCain/Bush proposal, and still do), but I am one of those who understands that people are, well people and I’m certainly not perfect and if I’m going to refuse to support anyone but the perfect conservative then I’ll never be able to support anyone. McCain is a good man, a war hero, a solid patriot, a man of moral courage - these are the qualities I want in a President and, at any rate, I love a respectful, intra-party fight anyways, so I’ll still battle President McCain on such things as CFR. For me, McCain wasn’t my first pick, but he’s an excellent pick, all the same.
Given such things as Obama’s support for the fanatic, pro-abortion proposals and other Obama policies directly contravening basic Christian teaching, it is no surprise that Evanglicals are starting to swing behind McCain in a serious way. America can’t afford four years of Carter, Part Two. Obama is a catastrophe in the making - but one we can un-make, if we’ll just rally ’round the man who is best for President in 2008, John McCain
26 comments July 24th, 2008 at 08:50am Mark Noonan
Might as well just mark down each Obama position and flip it over - from Byron York over at NRO’s The Corner:
The McCain campaign is pointing out that it was one year ago today, during a Democratic debate, that Barack Obama was asked the famous would-you-meet-Ahmadinejad-without-preconditions question. This was it:
QUESTION: In the spirit of…bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?
OBAMA: I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration - is ridiculous.
This morning, in Israel, Obama was asked whether he would still give the same answer. His response:
I think that what I said in response was that I would at my time and choosing be willing to meet with any leader if I thought it would promote the national security interests of the United States of America. And that continues to be my position. That if I think that I can get a deal that is going to advance our cause, then I would consider that opportunity. But what I also said was that there is a difference between meeting without preconditions and meeting without preparation.
You can check out the transcript of the whole 2007 debate here. Obama just didn’t talk about preparation.
The official word is still that Obama is a sure-thing to win…but he’s still only barely up in the polls and shows no signs of breaking out of his 45-47% range of support. The reason Obama isn’t walking away with this election? Because he’s proving himself ever more dishonest and nakedly ambitious for personal glory. People still don’t like the GOP and still aren’t sure about McCain, but outside the left and, naturally, African-Americans, the Obama myth has worn thin. None of this, in and of itself, means that McCain will win - McCain has a very hard fight in front of him and only a four in ten chance (at best) of winning it in the end - but Obama’s vulnerabilities are massive, glaring and growing…and one wonders just how long adulatory MSM coverage will keep the shine on the Obama apple?
32 comments July 24th, 2008 at 02:46am Mark Noonan
Possibly, very short list?
ROCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) – It’s VP tea leaf reading season, and a Republican source who attended a small private meeting with John McCain Tuesday in New Hampshire tells CNN that the GOP candidate dropped a serious hint about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.
The Republican source said “out of the blue” McCain told the gathering that he thinks they are “really going to like” Pawlenty.
As Chairman for the national McCain For President Committee, the perceived degree of possibility of Tim Pawlenty as a possible Veep pick for McCain has vacillated wildly since February of this year; at times it looked like he was a definite pick, at other times a longshot. Don’t get me wrong. I like Governor Pawlenty. But a Pawlenty pick would do very little to shore up McCain’s conservative bonafides. A pick of a true-blue conservative such as Bobby Jindal, on the other hand, would take the McCain campaign light years toward healing the obvious rift between conservative purists and some of the uncomfortably left-leaning policies of the McCain platform.
***UPDATE***
I guess a Bobby Jindal candidacy is not in the cards.
11 comments July 23rd, 2008 at 03:17pm Leo Pusateri
In the opinion of some, yes:
London, Jul. 21, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A decorated British police officer has filed a complaint before a local employment tribunal, charging that he has been harassed by his superiors because of his Christian beliefs.
Officer Graham Cogman,a 15-year veteran of the Norfolk police force, says that he has been subjected to complaints and investigations because he strongly resisted a campaign to encourage support for Gay History Month among the members of that force. Cogman has already been forced to pay a fine of £1,200 for alleged violations of department regulations, because he encouraged colleagues to resist the department’s pro-homosexual campaign. He now faces further disciplinary hearings on charges that he has promoted “homophobic” viewpoints.
At particular issue was an official e mail encouraging Norfolk officers to wear a pink ribbon on their uniform during gay history month (whatever that is, exactly) - Cogman refused and sent a response e mail quoting biblical passages regarding the sinfulness of homosexual acts. I don’t know what denomination Cogman is, but the basic thrust of officialdom here seems to be that pointing out dissent from reigning liberal orthodoxy is wrong - it isn’t differentiated in the news report, but it would seem that whether you use the gentle Catholic remonstrance against gay sex or the more in-your-face views of Evangelicals it is considered out of bounds to dissent from liberalism on gay issues.. My guess is that Cogman would have been fine had he kept his opinions to himself, though we don’t know what sorts of official pressure might have been indirectly placed on Cogman to toe the secularist, PC line. By daring to go behond passive resistence to what amounts to moral indoctrination (officers wearing pink ribbons on their uniform amounts to government propaganda in favor of the homosexual rights agenda), Cogman got himself in trouble.
It is said that one way to look at the conflicts of the world is to think in terms of there is the Church, and Her enemies. It is well established that any denomination which follows Christian teaching will hold that homosexual acts are disordered and never to be approved - this isn’t central to Christian faith (that would be the cross and events related to it), but it is an important point to be held because alone amongst the religions of the world, Christianity (and its base, Judaism) understand the true worth and use of sexual activity. Over centuries a set of rules were developed in order to regularise sexual activity and turn it more and more towards the act of self-donation it is supposed to be - recently, however, there has been a strong effort to disorder sexual activity and turn it more and more into an act of self-gratification. As part of a genuine respect for the body, love, marriage, sex and a true freedom in these things, Christianity hedged sex about with careful strictures…along comes the secularist to toss that all aside willy-nilly and then the leftist comes up not with the idea of toleration for people’s sins, but an insistence that the sin be called a virtule and that anyone who says otherwise must be punished.
Christianity, of course, can’t become what is wrong - the Church, that is, can’t declare wrong to be right. And so Christianity - as truly understood - will never agree to gay marriages or, indeed, any act which delays the propect of the person in question having a conversion. So to call Christinaity homophobic is to essentially call Christ’s Church an evil upon the face of the earth.
What do you think?
42 comments July 23rd, 2008 at 02:15pm Mark Noonan
Interesting recent poll from Rasmussen:
Nearly half of Americans (48%) now believe the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror, as opposed to 20% who give the nod to the terrorists, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national survey. These figures reflect a dramatic improvement from a year ago—in July 2007, only 36% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning. An equal number thought the terrorists held the advantage.
The 28-point difference is the most favorable margin recorded by Rasmussen Reports since tracking began in January 2004 and seems to reflect a growing confidence among adults that the tide is turning in Iraq and in the war on terror in general. The previous high was established on September 6, 2004 when 52% thought the U.S. and its allies were winning but 26% thought the terrorists were winning at that time for a 26-point favorable margin.
Thirty-seven percent (37%) now think the situation in Iraq will get better over the coming six months while only 25% expect it to get worse. A year ago, the assessment was far more pessimistic—just 23% said that things would get better while 49% offered the more pessimistic response. Another recent poll showed that 40% now believe it is possible for the U.S. to win the War in Iraq.
The new findings also show 45% now believe the United States is safer today than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, while 37% believe otherwise. Those figures are also the most optimistic on record.
The standard line about the end of the Cold War is that by putting the fear of nuclear war to bed, it allowed for a foreign policy lightweight - Bill Clinton- to win the White House. Its a great theory, but it forgets that 57% of the American people voted against Bill Clinton in 1992…hardly a ringing endorsement of Clinton’s policy prescriptions. But, today, the same idea is alive and well - heck, over at NRO’s The Corner some people seem to think that the mis-reported story of Maliki on Obama’s Iraq plan has pretty much wrecked McCain’s chances for November. The word is out - the American people really, really want to vote for a Democrat in November and McCain’s only shot was to convince the American people that with a war going on, placing our bets on the inexperienced Obama was too dangerous. And now that victory is breaking out in Iraq, that line is gone for good.
While there are a couple of third party candidates out there on the left and the right, my view is that for Obama to win he’s going to have to do something that no Democrat has managed in 32 years - score an outright majority of the vote in November. He can do it, but thus far the polling shows him consistently falling short and never showing any movement which would indicate he’s on his way to a majority. McCain seems stuck in the electoral doldrums, too - hardly ever breaking 45% in polling (though Rasmussen has recently showed Obama and McCain tied at 46%). What it seems to me is that while Obama has wowed his base, he’s not doing much with anyone else - meanwhile, McCain is doing remarkably well amongst independent voters, but has yet to enthuse the GOP base for November. Key to victory for McCain is energising the base, key for Obama is appealing outside the left.
In this McCain has an advantage. Obama is pretty much locked in to very leftwing positions - he’s tried to triangulate himself out of them, but he can’t stray too far towards the center lest he alienate too much of his base. McCain, on the other hand, has plenty of chances to make the argument to the GOP base that they’d better get excited about him - on taxes, spending, judges and the war, McCain is just what the GOP doctor ordered. McCain has two ways to do his job - propose conservative ideas, and point out Obama’s ultra liberal ideas, and what they’ll mean for America. In both cases, McCain can make a strong pitch for enthused GOP support.
So, while Obama and his Democrats might be thinking that the victory in Iraq gets them off the hook and they can just say “Afghanistan” from time to time and allow domestic issues to carry them to victory, in my view the victory in Iraq gives McCain the chance to force Obama on the defensive initially on just war issues, but eventually on the worthiness of his whole program. A man who can be so wrong about Iraq can also be wrong about other things - like whether or not he’ll be able to stick it out in Afghanistan; whether or not his health care plan is good for America; whether or not his energy policy has what it takes…on issue after issue, Obama’s manifestly bad judgement on Iraq can be used to question his fitness on other issues. And while doing this, McCain can continually point out his correctness on Iraq and how this courageous and right decision lays the groundwork for him to have the courage and wisdom to tackle judicial issues, Afghanistan, taxation, government waste, etc, etc, etc.
If attitudes about the war are improving as Rasmussen’s survey shows, then there may soon come a time when McCain’s pro-victory stance from 2007 switches from liability to asset, while Obama’s 2007 defeatism (already being shoved down the memory hole as far as Obama can manage it) will show through more and more as the foolhardy opinion of a man who hasn’t the knowledge, guts or wisdom to be President.
26 comments July 23rd, 2008 at 09:25am Mark Noonan
So says Kate Sheppard over at In These Times, by reason of McCain’s pro-life stance - calling a it “war on women”:
McCain’s campaign has been making a clear play for women voters in recent weeks, hosting conference calls with Republican women and touting that his policies on national security, the economy and healthcare appeal to women voters.
But the suggestion that women — and feminist women, at that — will be lining up behind him is a fairytale. At least, it should be. McCain’s record and policies on issues of importance to women are neither moderate nor maverick.
In The Nation, Katha Pollitt put it simply: “[T]o vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane.”…
…the number of progressive or even moderate voters who would seriously consider voting for McCain is much smaller than the media would have you believe. Unfortunately, McCain’s propaganda seems to be working, at least on those who aren’t aware of his record on issues of concern to women voters.
A February Planned Parenthood poll of 1,205 women voters in 16 battleground states found that 50 percent of women voters don’t know McCain’s position on abortion, and that 49 percent of women who backed McCain were pro-choice. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld — though McCain says he supports overturning the decision. When they learned of his position on Roe, 36 percent of women who identified as both pro-choice and likely McCain voters said they would be less likely to vote for him.
These moderate, often suburban, middle-class women could be critical swing voters this election. At the time of the Planned Parenthood poll, Obama held only a 5 percentage-point margin over McCain with its swing-state demographic, 41 percent to 36 percent.
Planned Parenthood concludes that these findings suggest “that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.”
All of that predicated on a theory that women are so in love with abortion that the mere fact of McCain’s opposition will doom him - such theory being a standard on the left every election cycle with the only flaw being that it never comes out that way. We GOPers are always warned that our pro-life stance will destroy us at the polls and yet we manage to win from time to time (like 7 out of the last 10 times - and the times we lost it wasn’t because we’re pro-life). Be that as it may, does McCain’s pro-life view make him a sexist at war with women?
If you’re a leftist, it does - because for the left, abortion has become a sacrament in the Church of Secularism. As a Catholic views Annointing of the Sick (”last rites” for you non-Catholics out there), so the leftist views abortion - a thing not done all the time, but vital to the overall health of the organism. To be opposed to abortion on the left is akin to being opposed to forgiveness of sins in Christianity - it just isn’t done. So entrenched is this view that even someone as kooky as Kucinich was forced to drop a lifetime of pro-life views when he made his quixotic run for the White House. Calling McCain a “sexist” is just liberal-speak for saying “he disagrees with us on abortion”.
And thus the real battle is joined - in the end, Iraq, Afghanistan, oil prices, inflation and the rest are all secondary: the dividing line in America is over the issue of Life. The Culture of Life battles the Culture of Death, and eventually America will become all one thing or all the other. That is, all Life or all Death.
The particular issue, abortion, won’t be on the ballot - but the mindset which allows abortion and the mindset which seeks its end will be, and in this year of 2008 the stakes are very crucial as the judges who will either overturn or uphold Roe for another generation are likely to be appointed by the next President. It will be one battle in a long war, but for those of us who fight for Life, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
17 comments July 23rd, 2008 at 12:11am Mark Noonan
Today on CBS’s Face the Nation, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in Afghanistan, told the paparazzi-pursued correspondent Lara Logan that “the objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to 10 years.
“And it’s important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are.”
That’s the same Barack Obama, the former constitutional law professor, who apparently doesn’t know the length of a presidential term.
Let’s give the professor a little crash course… from The Constitution, Article II, Section 1:
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected […]
Maybe Obama should review it before he continues his campaign, before he gets something else wrong.
14 comments July 22nd, 2008 at 06:17pm Matt Margolis
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